Steve Wozniak Speaks Out Against NSA Spying: This Is Not My America

from the the-woz-speaks dept

The latest to speak out against NSA surveillance is "every geek's uncle," Steve Wozniak, who explained that "this is not my America." The video is worth watching:

He makes a ton of great points about things that, when we were kids, we learned that the US did not do. And now, we do lots of them: spying on everyone, secret courts, secret prisons, etc.

When I was brought up, my dad taught me, other countries, when they got prisoners in a war, they tortured them. But we Americans didn't torture them.... And I was so proud of my country. And now I find out it's just the opposite. I just wish, all these things that I talk about with the Constitution -- which made us so good as people -- they're nothing. They were all dissolved with the Patriot Act. There are these laws that just sort of say we can secretly call anything terrorism and do anything we want.... And I read the Constitution, and I'm not even sure how all this stuff happened. It's so clear what the Constitution says. It's extremely clear in the Bill of Rights. One thing after another after another that got overturned. That's what a king does. A king just goes out and rounds anyone up, has them killed, put in secret prisons.

When I was brought up, we were told that Communist Russia was the ones that were going to kill us and bomb our country and all this. And Communist Russia was so bad because they followed their people, they snooped on them, they arrested them, they put them in secret prisons, they disappeared them. These kinds of things were part of Russia. We're getting more and more like that....

It's a bit hyperbolic, but more and more people are beginning to recognize how problematic the governments' actions have been of late.